Thought I was going to a football/soccar/rugby game in a square in Florence Italy.
It is called Calicio Storico Florentino.
It was a full contact fight in the middle of a rugby match. Most of the front line guys were professional boxers/kickboxers and wrestler/grapplers. There are no rules. About 10 guys squaring off with ten other guys all in boxing stances and they were kicking, jabbing, hooks and grappling. The other guys on the field were assigned to stop the ball carrier in anyway possible. The blocks were brutal, they could range from hooks,kicks, full on tackles. They only carried out three players on strecher. I could not follow the game, too much action in all areas of the field.
Looked like a 50 minute gang fight with members only wearing wraps on their hand. Happens in July. Wild. :naka:

I heard of that before but never got to see a match. Looks like fun. Probaly better than getting smacked by a tomato!

7/04/2005 12:30pm,

777

whoa, i saw on tv once there's some sort of sport (or game?) where it's like full contact fighting + rugby.
They slow motion-ed a segment of the game and from there, u can see people from opposing terms trying their best to stop the guy with the ball: one guy trying to jump on him and missed while another at the side tried a jumping kick, at the same time, some others are fighting it out in the background - one dude sort of suplex the another guy in the mud (yeah, the field looks muddy).

could that be the same type of game i've been wondering all this time? :P

7/04/2005 6:58pm,

skanlessflipboy

any video clips? btw this would attarct many viewers if brought to US

7/04/2005 8:40pm,

Equipoise

I'd do it. But it's not an all out brawl. It's just a large wrestling match. You can't beat the hell out of one guy.

7/04/2005 9:47pm,

Kokujin

The italians are crazy...crazy I tell you! Lol! I remembered seeing that stuff once in TV and finding it crazy, but strangely cool. There's a lot of tension between italian cities,regions and even parts of town, so,instead of killing eachother in petty vendettas they play the "calcio" to pour every ounce of animosity building up in the year.It's a great way to relieve the stress and don' t think this is the only example...see the stick fights/rock trowing once a year in Peru between rival villages, the stick fights between african villages or the oil wrestling in Turkey(not much of a group brawl, but all about rivalary)

7/04/2005 10:16pm,

Equipoise

We're not that crazy =-)

Calcio just means soccer btw.

7/05/2005 2:34am,

Astrosmurf

I saw some footage of one of these matches in a recent documentary on Leonardo Da Vinci. Apparantly it was Leonardo who designed the costumes for the game.

7/05/2005 8:37am,

lawdog

I watched it live back in the late eighties. It's much more intense than it appears on t.v. It's basically like a no-rules rugby match on steroids.

7/05/2005 9:47am,

patfromlogan

Cool! I'll be in Florence the end of July - maybe I can take pictures. Last time I was in Italy some English guys with very large heads and some tough looking Italians invited me to play rugby; yeah right... thanks anyway. There is a giant rugby player here, looks like a white Karl Malone, who's into karate and wrestling. A BYU (known here as '**** BYU') Samoan rugby guy cheated so our guy grabbed his elbow and kimured him.